The Suffolk Count!/ Medical Club. 
379 
and who resides within a certain specified distance, for the sum 
of five shillings a year. The rates of payment for a man and 
his wife are nine shillings, and for each child (up to five 
children) one shilling each ; no further charge being made 
when the number of children exceeds five. A member of any 
other benefit club may claim an exemption of four shillings 
from the above sum. Women in their confinements are attended 
for ten shillings ; the remaining fees payable to a medical man 
being supplemented by the honorary fund. 
It is not an unusual thing lor operations or fractures to cost 
from three to five guineas, a sum which no poor man is able to 
pay. By belonging to this club, such payments will be avoided, 
and a man can look with certainty to the fact, that however 
large his family, all ordinary doctor's expenses (except for con- 
finements) will never exceed fourteen shillings a year. 
In one year and a-half, about 4000 members have joined the 
Eye Medical Club, almost without solicitation, the working 
classes having at once perceived the advantages which a club 
of this description holds out to them ; and the County Medical 
Club proposes to extend its operation beyond the limits of the 
Eye Club, to the whole county. 
Most of the principal doctors in the county have consented to 
the terms, now for the first time embodied in the rules certified 
by the Registrar ; but the Medical Club by its rules cannot 
proceed to the appointment of a committee to carry its pro- 
visions out until a certain number of members have joined to 
elect that committee. 
According to one rule, stewards must be chosen in each parish 
to receive the payments of members willing to join ; and in 
every district comprising one or two unions, there may be a 
secretary appointed to communicate with the stewards and with 
the central society at Ipswich. 
In order that the working-classes in the various parishes may 
understand the objects of this Medical Club, it will be neces- 
sary at once that small meetings should be held to explain the 
rules ; and that stewards be appointed who will act voluntarily, 
and be willing to receive the payments of members. 
When a committee has been selected, which it has been pro- 
posed to appoint at the next public meeting at Bury St. Edmund's, 
more direct rules for the guidance of stewards will be issued, 
the names of the medical men willing to join the club will be 
printed, and the society will be put in working order. 
The club will be self-supporting, except in three particulars, 
viz : — the management fund, the accident fund, and extra pay- 
ments to the medical men for confinements. 
Any person bestowing a donation of 5/., or paying half-a- 
